Chapter Twenty-Eight.
Defeating the Vorcha wasn't difficult at all. I didn't have anything of interest to tell Commander Shepard as she fought her way through their numbers like a lawnmower against blades of grass. Or a hair cutting tool against a hippie. It was...gory.
I will leave the description of viscera, blood, and various random Vorcha organ flying as high speed shotgun bullets perforated their innards up to the imagination of someone else.
I admit, the game did keep it very, very clean.
There was blood on the floor everywhere.
And I couldn't show the weakness of retching in a corner my non-existing breakfast, so I kept myself quiet and still, letting my body be 'pulled' along for the ride.
Shepard never missed.
Now, if you fire thirty bullets, you're going to miss at least once. It's a fact. You can't just tell me you can fire thirty shot, hit thirty targets, and do all that as headshots. It just isn't done.
It's not possible.
Now, if Cerberus actually made Commander Shepard a sort of 'Mary Sue of Utter Doom', then I could understand. I would be shocked, utterly aghast, but I would understand. You've got to save the galaxy, your chance is through getting the original back to life, while we're at it let's give her the strength of a Krogan and the hand coordination and reflexes of...some sort of highly coordinated species.
And if that wasn't the case, and Commander Shepard was that good by herself...
Then why weren't they funding clonation and getting an army of her?
"You chose a bad day to stand in my way!" she snarled, and pulled the trigger thrice, at point-blank, against the face of a screaming Vorcha.
The Vorcha was screaming in fear.
Right. The emotional issues.
"Was a triple tap really necessary?" I asked offhandedly, a hand in front of my mouth as she kicked aside the corpse to have room to maneuver the cure into the air system, as well as reactivating it.
"Vorcha have a lot of redundant organs."
"Aren't those the Krogans?" I asked.
"Maybe. Don't care. I find the differences they make while they scream their last to be more entertaining."
Ka-chink.
I grimaced.
"Commander? Were you talking to me?" Miranda asked.
"No," Shepard replied calmly. "I wasn't talking. The cure's in the system, the air's working...let's get back to the good doctor's clinic and get him on board."
I remained quiet.
It had been unmistakeable, and this time, I had counted them.
Five.
At the end of five Ka-chinks, there would be ten seconds, then a 'clunk', and then my fate would be 'sealed' and I'd end up moving again.
It was precise.
If everything remained as per 'Trust' scenario, then I'd move on as soon as four more were heard.
But then again, I doubted Shepard 'respected' me or 'trusted' me. No, the concept had to be larger than that, more wide in acceptance. As it was, Shepard understood we worked together to save the galaxy. She was willing to extend thus a minimum of trust in my regards.
And it had been acquired the moment we had exchanged banter that hadn't been poisonous, nor had it contained tiny barbs at one another.
It was dangerous.
Mordin quickly packed, and then headed off for the Normandy while Shepard instead began his walk towards Omega's prime establishment once more, this time to enter the 'recruitment' of the mercenaries.
She hadn't even washed her armor off.
The bouncer aptly decided to stand aside and not say anything to the woman who had Vorcha guts draped around her shoulders like it was an expensive fur.
Heck, on Omega, that was probably what passed by for 'furs'. Vorcha skin.
Or Krogan guts.
Or things like that.
"Sign me right up! See, I've got a gun!" a young boy exclaimed in front of the line, excitedly waving around the gun. The mercenaries weren't impressed.
"Punch the light out of him," I deadpanned. "He's a danger to everyone else on his firing line, and he dies horribly too."
Shepard, good g-ahem, Shepard, Gut-Dressed that she was, merely patted the boy's shoulder to make him turn around, and at the same time delivered him one hell of a punch that sent him reeling on the floor, knocked out.
"If they're all like this," she snarled to the mercenary captain, "I don't think you're going to take Archangel."
"We planned on using those like him as fodder," the mercenary captain remarked offhandedly, not even bothered one of his 'recruits' was down on the ground.
"Sign me and my team up," she said.
"My team and I," I corrected her.
She didn't show signs of having heard me.
The mercenary didn't need convincing. Then again, there was a woman with Vorcha guts on her armor in front of him.
I doubted anyone would have wanted to mess with someone who didn't care they had...
"You know, you have Vorcha guts draped around your shoulders?" I said, once more as if it was the most common thing in the universe.
"Oh," Shepard said as she walked towards the...what were they, city-shuttles? anyway, as she walked, she patted her shoulders and removed them. "Damn visor," she grumbled. "Can't see my shoulders."
"So you weren't doing it on purpose?" I asked.
She was about to answer, but then realized Miranda and Jacob were still there, and thus stayed quiet.
The trip with the city shuttle was, in the game, nothing more than a loading screen. I, on the other hand, savored the trip as we flew through the sprawl that was Omega, all the while keeping an eye out for the destination.
My memory on what the mission actually entailed was fuzzy -I did remember the renegade action of knocking out the guy repairing the flying...helicopter? Anti-Grav Copter?
Anyway, I remembered that scene, and somewhere in my fuzzy brain there also was another about a paragon interrupt.
Maybe.
Unless I was imagining it.
The leader of the blue sun's, or at least the guy coming to meet the 'new batches', was a batarian.
I hummed as I listened to things I still remembered, about the bridge being a killing zone, Garrus being holed up and starting to make mistakes, a small team preparing to infiltrate at Garrus' distraction, and...that was pretty much it.
Until Edi's voice began to buzz in through Shepard's helmet, telling her that indeed, there was no other path.
I hummed. So that was where Shepard in the game got the idea of dealing with...gunships and mechs.
I had forgotten about the mechs.
But I did remember where they were once my memory was jolted
"The mechs are this way," I said, and pointed to a side door that led to where a salarian was talking about the attacking plans. "In that room over there," I added.
The only problem...was that there was a guard on standby.
Right.
This wasn't game-Mass Effect. Of course you wouldn't let a mere freelancer merc go anywhere near your mechs now, would you? After all, you'd have to be moronic stupid to not guard your mechs.
I was starting to think something was clearly going on.
Still, the lonely guard was in a corridor, rather than in the main hall where the rest of the mercenaries were.
"Miranda?" Shepard asked.
"Yes Shepard?" Miranda said, as the guard kept a lecherous eye on Miranda's generous bust.
"Blood makes me all hot and bothered," Shepard said offhandedly, loud enough for the guard to hear. "And we might die soon too. I don't want to die without scratching my itches."
I had a hand in front of my face.
This was not happening.
Miranda was a good sport and understood. "Oh, yes, I think I do understand."
Jacob was on the same boat as me.
Only, he averted his sight and was probably thinking inwardly 'What. Is. Going. On.'
I repressed the shudders as I watched the most cliché of lines actually work on the dumb-as-bricks guard.
He actually opened the door of the mech garage to have some 'privacy'.
And received a knock-knock joke under the form of a Shepard-Express Punch to the face, followed by a beat down on the floor.
"That was disgusting, Shepard," Miranda said.
"It got the job done with the guard. Now get working on the targeting parameters of the mechs."
"Yes Commander."
I sighed. "Hide the body," I drawled. "In a crate or something."
"Jacob, hide the body in a crate," Shepard said, and Jacob quickly obeyed.
And that was it for the Mech.
I had half a mind of wondering if it had been chance once more that they had ended up with a dumb-as-rock merc, or if it had all been part of some sort of subtle warning alert I should heed.
'Things are different, but they stay the same'.
I grumbled as we moved through a corridor, past the blood packs and into the area where the gunship was repaired.
There were guards there too, three of them.
And I couldn't recall for the love of all how they went away or why Shepard moved past...
"Team Bravo, go, go, go!"
Oh.
The attack on Archangel began and those guys left in a hurry, leaving behind the technician.
"Kill him, and plant charges on the gunship," I said softly. "A grenade pin triggered when the door opens would be nice."
"You want a cocktail with it?" Shepard retorted.
"A martini, mixed, but not shaken," I replied.
"The hell is a martini?" she mumbled as she ended the technician's life with...
Oh god.
She was talking normally, really, her voice hadn't changed an inch, but...
But in the meantime, she had tapped gently the technician, made him turn, slammed a fist against his face breaking the visor, taken the laser cutter...and drove it deep through the batarian's face.
The batarian died with a whimper.
Shepard removed the bits of batarian brain from her fingers.
I just...
I just looked.
I looked at...at...gah...gah...da-da-da. Happy place. Go in a happy place. A happy place is where the is no fried brain of batarian. A happy place is where everyone's happy. Happy. Happy. I'm so happy I'm in a happy place.
Everything's fine and rosy tinted in a happy place.
"Eh," Shepard smirked as she walked away from the gory scene, a couple of grenades left inside the half-closed gunship's door.
When the door would open, the pin would be ejected thanks to a tiny steel wire, and the explosion would tear apart the pilot and the ship's controls.
And then we headed towards the barricade.
I admit, I expected a massacre.
It was, in fact. There was corpses, dozens of them strewn around. The freelancers were waddling through them, some with lost limbs from highly powered shots tearing them apart. It was a scene of carnage...
And Shepard added to it shooting straight in the back of the freelancers.
Jacob concentrated fire, his shots glowing red hot as some unlucky guys ended up burning alive into cinders in mere instants -that had to hurt, there was no other way around it.
And Miranda flung a couple of dudes off the ledge, to die thanks to Gravity, the number one bitch of the universe.
Everyone bows to gravity.
Everyone.
Except anti-grav, I think.
Lalala.
Don't look at the corpses.
You're doing a good job Shade. Don't look at the corpses.
Believe~
Believe in yourself~
Shepard's not going to brutally murder you because she can't~
I want my mommy~
I want to forget seeing all this carnage~
Please merciful god, please, I'll be a good boy, I swear~
I swear I'll write only uplifting stories of love and friendship. I swear I'll be a very good, very nice, very kind boy. Shade is a good boy.
I swear.
Just stop this.
Please, stop this.
That guy's crawling away holding his guts and Shepard's hitting him in the back with a burst of fire.
I don't want to see that.
There's another crying, and Jacob's putting a hole in his head.
I don't want to see that.
Please god. Please.
I promise I'll be good.
The meeting with Archangel would probably be a good one.
I couldn't care less.
I was twitching.
How much blood is there in a human body?
A lot.
Too much.
Too much to see.
...
I wanted to go home.
I. Wanted. To. Go. Home.
And I couldn't.
//Whistles Innocently. This is going too far. I like this.